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Remember the moment at the end of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire when he funds Fred and George’s joke shop?  What is it he says to them?  Ah yes. “I could do with a few laughs. We could all do with a few laughs. I’ve got a feeling we’re going to need them more than usual before long.”  I feel like, once again, Rowling put her finger on the pulse of what we need to hear.  Today’s post is in honor of that spirit.

Here’s a little happy news for you to kick it all off.  The World Science Fiction Society (WSFS), coordinator of the World Science Fiction Convention (WorldCon) has given first approval to a new Young Adult Science / Fantasy Award.  The problem?  It needs a name!  That’s where you come in.  There’s a name-the-award-survey out there, but the deadline is November 15th.  Now, could we talk about doing something similar for ALA’s YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults?  Perhaps rename it and stat?

In other news, the nominees for the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award for 2017 were announced.  If you’re unfamiliar with that particular award, it’s the one with the biggest monetary prize attached to it.  The prize can go to any author, illustrator, storyteller or “reading promoter”.  American nominees on this year’s list include:

I’ve very much been enjoying the multiple articles out there about Are You an Echo?, that remarkable picture book biography/poetry collection about Misuzu Kaneko.  First there was this 7-Imp interview with David Jacobson, the writer/translator of the book.  Then there was this great piece over at Playing By the Book that gives additional background information about its illustrator Toshikado Hajiri.  Love it.  Be sure to check out the interior art at 7-Imp here as well.

It occurs to me that I don’t think I’ve ever had a chance to examine Robert McCloskey’s artwork and sketches up close before.  If I were in Boston I could remedy the situation with the upcoming Make Way for Ducklings: The Art of Robert McCloskey, held at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston.  Good to know about in any case.

It’s not uncommon for me to be the last to know when a picture book has struck a nerve.  Such was the case with Shmelf the Hanukkah Elf, though if I’d taken even two seconds to think about it I probably could have seen it coming.  Marjorie Ingall slices and dices the book, clarifying precisely why what it does doesn’t work.  There’s also a truly lovely shout out in there for  Dear Santa, Love Rachel Rosenstein which I gave too little attention to when it came out.  Well played, Marjorie.

By the way, I feel I should also mention her stellar post How to Explain the Refugee Crisis to Kids as well.  If you read nothing else today, read this.

Oh.  I won a thing but I don’t think I mentioned it before.  Remember when I said in an earlier post that A Fuse #8 Production was nominated for a 2016 FOLIO: Eddie and Ozzie Award?  Well, it won!  Yep!  Neat!

Conspiracy theories and children’s books: Two great tastes that taste great together.  Nowhere more true than in the recent 100 Scope Notes piece We Found a (Man in the Yellow) Hat? It ties an old picture book to a new one in an original way.  No small task.

Boy, if it weren’t for the Cubs winning the World Series, I’d swear the universe had it out for me.  Now I hear that the Rosenbach of the Free Library of Philadelphia lost a significant chunk of its case against the Sendak Estate?  Doggone it.  That’s it.  I’m moving to Australia.

Hey!  Did you know that there’s a Chicago Book Expo?  News to me.  Better still, there’s a neat event going on there called Our Voices Initiative: Encouraging Diversity in Publishing.  Here’s the program description:

The demand for diverse, quality books is great. Independent publishers have responded with an explosion of books by and about diverse people. Join members of the American Library Association Our Voices advisory council, who represent professionals from across the book ecosystem, to discuss the issue of diversity in publishing and the work they are doing to promote and support diverse content. Come and add your voice to the discussion.

Panelists will include Curt Matthews, Founder and Chairman of the Board for the Chicago Review Press and Independent Publisher’s Group; Jeff Deutsch, Director of the Seminary Co-op Bookstores, which includes 57th Street Books; Felicia Shakespeare, best-selling author and library media specialist; and Joy Triche, Founder and Publisher of Tiger Stripe Publishing. Donna Seaman, Editor, Adult Books at Booklist, will moderate the discussion.

You can see more information at this Facebook link too.

The New York Times Best Illustrated list of 2016 children’s books was released earlier this month.  Some good choices.  Some choices that cause me to grind my teeth in a counter-clockwise direction.  In other words, a pretty standard year.

Fun Fact: Were you aware that Lois Lowry’s Anastasia Krupnik books were never meant to be a series?  Do you know what Ms. Lowry thinks about censorship?  Do you know what her next projects are (and that they’re completely out of her genre)?  Good news then.  Over at the Cotsen Children’s Library the podcast The Bibliofiles has an interview with Lowry about all these things.  And more.

Daily Image:

I’m fine.  I’m all fine here now, thank you.  How are you?

Time of Wonder

 by Robert McCloskey

           How could I begin my Liz’s Summer Picks with any other book than Robert McCloskey’s Time of Wonder?  Winner of The Caldecott Medal as “The most distinguished picture book of 1958,” it is a classic picture book, if the word classic still has meaning in this genre. His observations of one matchless summer season in the islands in and around Penobscot Bay in Maine are evocative, beautifully illustrated and reflective as the moods of the seasons and the sea he describes through the eyes of two children.

Out on the islands that poke their rocky shores above the waters of

Penobscot Bay you can watch the time of the world go by from minute

to minute, hour to hour, from day to day, season to season.

           Whether diving off rocks on the island’s point made by glaciers eons ago into icy cold water, sailing among the islands where mother seals nurse their babies in Swain’s Cove Ledges, watching porpoises at sunset “puffing and playing around your boat”, days build with a lazy momentum. It captures the pulse and promise of life lived by this family of four that is unhurried enough to savor the moments. But these small moments of discovery build to a sense and signal that the winds inevitably change to something quite eventful. Nature can change in a moment with a sudden ferocity coming ashore, blowing the cozy cabin door open sending people, Parcheesi boards and papers flying.

            There is gentleness to McCloskey’s book that gives the eye and ear time to sense and explore with the children the feeling of this island respite in Maine. And there is a sweet sadness at its close as another summer ends and school beckons with the quickening pace of life off island. The time you and your children will spend there is time lived fully and intimately with nature and the natural pace she sets. It is a time of wonder you will long remember and savor with your child again and again.

Lentil

By Robert McCloskey

Yes, it’s the same author of Make Way for Ducklings, One Morning in Maine, Time of Wonder, and Blueberries for Sal, many of which take place in Maine. But just maybe your young reader missed not only these, but another peek at a slower pace of childhood in Lentil!

Mr. McCloskey grew up in Ohio, so it’s not unusual that this picture book is set in a place called Alto, Ohio wherein lives a lad named Lentil.

It’s a happy life in Alto, save one glitch: Lentil wants to sing and can’t. Can’t sing and can’t even whistle, so what do? Why buy a harmonica of course!

Pennies saved buys the longed for harmonica and Lentil plays early and often with the best sound reverb coming from playing in his bathtub! Most everyone enjoys the sounds emanating from Lentil’s harmonica, save for OLD SNEEP. Don’t you just love the oily sound of that name? You don’t even have to LOOK at Mr. McCloskey’s perfect black and white drawings to figure out what kind of character ole Sneep will turn out to be. Why, he’s a veritable grump of course, and a wood whittling, park bench-sitting grump at that.

News spreads fast in small towns and the famous Colonel Carter, one of Alto’s most favored citizens, is descending after two years away. He owns the finest house in Alto and the library was a gift from the Colonel. Everyone is excited except Old Sneep:

“Humph! We wuz boys together. He ain’t

A mite better’n you or me and he needs

Takin’ down a peg or two.”

(Good time for an introduction by the reader on the whys and wherefore of dialect allowances.)    

So Alto plans a big celebration for the Colonel with crowds, flags flying, speeches AND the Alto band set to play as he exits the train. BUT ole Sneep, jealous of the Colonel’s celebrity, is the fly in the ointment, and commences slurping a LEMON from the roof of the train station as the band puts lips to instruments. Talk about being unable to wet your whistle, all the band mates can do is pucker rather than play because of the slurping sound of ole Sneep!

But guess who knows a nifty version of “Comin’ Round the Mountain When She Comes?” Soon the Colonel is finger snapping and singing. And he even joins in on a chorus or two with Lentil’s harmonica, as it seems the Colonel played one as a child! In fact the Colonel is so happy about the bang up welcome he received, he’s going to build a HOSPITAL for ALTO. Even ole Sneep is so happy he can be seen indulging in an ice cream cone to celebrate the occasion.

Mr. McCloskey has a gift for portraying the large heart within a small town like Alto or a big city like Boston in “Make Way for Ducklings.” His art and words make people and places VERY ACCESSIBLE to your child whether they’ve been there or not. Don’t let the sounds of Lentil’s harmonica, the Colonel, Sneep and the good people of Alto elude your young reader’s ears. It is childhood at its simplest, community with all the shadings of gray and a great heart at the center!!

#31 Blueberries for Sal by Robert McCloskey (1948)
54 points

It’s hard to pick a favorite McCloskey, but I think of this one every time I pick blueberries. – Jessalyn Gale

Honestly, I think my favorite part as a kid was just staring at the endpapers with the scene of Sal and her mom in the kitchen, noticing all the details. This is a hangover favorite from childhood that I really can’t otherwise think to say what’s so great about it except that I always loved it. - Amy M. Weir

I was speaking with a fellow librarian the other day about a classic children’s book (which shall remain nameless) that both of us missed in our youth.  Our response to it was not overwhelmingly positive, and we figured that had to be because we “missed it”.  Now I don’t remember reading Blueberries for Sal as a kid, but I don’t think it’s possible to “miss” the appeal of this one.  Brooke and Amy have already pinpointed the two major reasons why:  Blueberry picking is the ultimate child sport, and any author/illustrator who can make blue ink continually compelling must be some kind of genius.  I’ve heard theories that speculate that part of the charm of this book also lies in the boy/girl nature of Sal.  She/He walks about in those gender neutral overalls and long, but not too long, hair.  We associate the name “Sal” with “Sally”, but it could just as easily be a nickname for “Salvador” and the like.  It’s a theory anyway.

The Amazon summary of the plot reads, “Kuplink, kuplank, kuplunk go the blueberries into the pail of a little girl named Sal who–try as she might–just can’t seem to pick as fast as she eats. Robert McCloskey’s classic is a magical tale of the irrepressible curiosity–not to mention appetite–of youth. Sal and her mother set off in search of blueberries for the winter at the same time as a mother bear and her cub. A quiet comedy of errors ensues when the young ones wander off and absentmindedly trail the wrong mothers.”

Minders of Make-Believe has a section on McCloskey that sums the man up pretty well.  “As May Massee’s protege and the son-in-law of Newbery Medal winner Ruth Sawyer, McCloskey, his genuinely modest midwestern manner notwithstanding, was as close to being picture-book royalty as it was possible to come.” And Children’s Literature: A Reader’s History from Aesop to Harry Potter by Seth Lerer offers this consideration of the book: “Blueberries for Sal shows how we select the sweetness in the world and how adventure – little Sal confronted with a baby bear – can resolve itself through taste.”  Lerer then goes on to say that, in a sense, this book had a sequel.  “In One Morning in Maine, Sal has grown to an age when she can lose a tooth – and lose it she does, as she and her family go clam-digging.”  Huh.  I had no idea.  I’ve even read and enjoyed One Morning in Maine, but the name “Sal” never quite struck my notice.

Blueberries for Sal made the news not too long ago when it was discovered that book, against all logic and reason, was out of print.  In the April 9, 2009 Publishers Weekly article The Return of ‘Blueberries for Sal’, however, the entire situation was explained and resolved.  You see the McCloskey estate wanted to renegotiate the rights and when an immediate solution wasn’t availabl

I can’t pinpoint what it was that made me think of this.  In this day and age with children’s picture book characters appearing as television and movie characters every other minute, to say nothing of the new deals being made with the names of classics we all grew up with, it’s a lot easier to pinpoint the ones that haven’t been appropriated by the entertainment industry. With producers more than willing to suck every little last bit of goodwill from a property, here is a list (insofar as I know) of the characters that haven’t been seen in their own television shows / CGI films.  Oh, and I should note that when I say these haven’t been adapted I am not referring to the multiple very clever stage shows made of each one of these.  Theater is the classy version of what I’m envisioning here:

- The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle : Not that you can miss him.  If you don’t own Caterpillar bedsheets or hand puppets then maybe you have him on your curtains and wallpaper.  I’m no different.  My child is proud to sport Caterpillar shoes and eats from Caterpillar plates.  Still, we haven’t yet seen the Caterpillar Saturday morning cartoon show.  And it would be soooo easy to do so.  The Caterpillar and his friends (The Very Quiet Cricket, the Very Grumpy Ladybug, the Very Lonely Firefly, etc.) have a variety of preschool-friendly adventures, usually involving counting, colors, and days of the week.  Oh, you just know some exec has pitched this to Carle himself.  Fortunately the fellow doesn’t need the dough.

- Peter and friends from the books of Ezra Jack Keats : They have been adapted into books by authors other than Mr. Keats, and in the 70s there were some pretty awesome live action short films made of their stories.  However, there’s been nothing recent, which raises my suspicions.  Is there a belief that stories about inner city kids wouldn’t sell or are the characters too enmeshed in their era to be timely?  I suspect the former but I’m naturally suspicious.  Could just be the Keats estate is full of classy folks unwilling to sell out.

- The Pigeon from Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus by Mo Willems – Or Elephant and Piggie for that matter.  This isn’t entirely surprising, of course.  Mo’s not exactly a small town rube.  He knows the television world well having worked there for a while (to say nothing of this) and I wouldn’t be surprised if the multiple folks courting him have been rebuffed mightily over the years.  Like Carle, Willems doesn’t need ‘em.  His Pigeon does well enough on its own.

- Harold from Harold and the Purple Crayon by Crockett Johnson – Short animated films of Harold have been made, but I live in fear that . . . oops.  Didn’t see this.  Just found out about 7 Comments on It’s Only a Matter of Time: Licensed Properties That Haven’t Made the Leap to Film, last added: 11/22/2011